The Guardian 14 October 2021

Lewis den Hertog’s images have the sheen of a corporate video. A mother and child on a water chute smile for the camera. A swimmer ploughs in slow motion across a pool. A couple giggle through a facial treatment in a spa. Projected on the back wall of Jen McGinley’s community centre set, they are a blandly reassuring fantasy. Who wouldn’t want to escape to the Big Splash resort?

You can see why local folk think it’s a good idea. In Kieran Hurley’s play, a reworking of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People provocatively thrust into the age of social media, they are banking on this new holiday centre. If they are to reverse the fortunes of their dead-end west-coast town, it is their only hope. It’ll bring tourists and jobs. It might even earn them the title of City of Regeneration. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).